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The concept was central to 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Picture: YouTube)

New research suggests that spot-cleaning the brain using electroconvulsive therapy a la Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind may actually be possible.

‘ECT? Isn’t that the stuff of archaic medicine and dystopian thrillers?’ I hear you cry, but a report in Nature claims that ‘despite its sometimes negative reputation, ECT is an effective last-resort treatment for severe depression, and is used today in combination with anaesthesia and muscle relaxants.’

The study found that it can also be harnessed to effectively remove certain memories from the brain, causing subjects to forget elements of a specific story they had been told prior to treatment.

The study claims:

‘The team later prompted patients to recall only one of the stories by replaying part of that slide show. Immediately afterwards, when the reactivated memory is thought to be vulnerable, the patients received electroconvulsive therapy.

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‘One day later, when given a multiple-choice memory test, patients were significantly worse at remembering details from the reactivated story, performing near chance.’

Film buffs may remember a similar technique being used in Jim Carrey-starring psychological drama Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but one neuroscientist says this method, which still needs a lot more research, could be even better.

‘This is one time I would say that science is better than art,’ said says Karim Nader, of McGill University in Montreal, Canada. ‘It’s a very clever study.’